Introduction
Roads & Traffic
Food & Sleep
Landscapes
Weather
People
My Route
Introduction
Beginning in 2008, I rode my bicycle 3591 miles across the United States of America. It is not my intention to provide here a blog of that trip, (you might like to read my book once it’s written). Neither is this a how-to-guide. It’s more of a gentle introduction; pointers that might be of use if you’ve ever contemplated riding in the United States because there are an awful lot of factors to consider, and I hope by reading this, it will provide you with some food for thought.
Whilst planning my cycle tour of the States, it was tough to get my head around the fact I’d be cycling not just across a country, but an entire continent. A place so vast it spans four time zones and offers the cycle tourist a mindboggling array of choices. Which route would I take? Which season was best for riding? What sort of terrain would I encounter and which places would I like to visit?
From the word go, I was dead set on riding from New York to Los Angles, mainly because it sounded so awesome, but that didn’t narrow down the unending options for the bits in between. And so, I went with my tried and tested method; read a guide book, find a map, circle all the places I’d like to see and then join them up. (High tec stuff huh!) Initially I thought I might take a more northerly route in order to see Chicago, Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore. But other iconic names were calling: the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Kansas City and Monument Valley, and so I settled for a more southerly route. But, here’s the rub: the United States is so big, it’s just not possible to see it all by bicycle… On a global scale, you might think Death Valley, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon are fairly close together, but in reality, you’d still have to cycle hundreds of miles out your way to see them all and with my time and funds strictly limited, I was going to have to make some sacrifices. I just didn’t know which ones yet.
By this stage of my life, I wasn’t in a position to just up sticks, fly to America and stay until my ride was done. And nor did I want to if I’m honest; I had a job I enjoyed and a mortgage I needed to repay so unlike the trips I made in my younger days, this one took meticulous planning. (Read… a lot of begging my employer to either let me consolidate a year’s worth of my leave entitlement into one lump or for an unpaid sabbatical.) I eventually rode across America in several stages. There are some obvious down sides to doing this: the extra expense, the break of continuity each time I had to pack up and go home, not to mention that despite my best efforts, I always lost most of the fitness I’d gained in the interim. But on the bright side, it allowed me to plan my trip to avoid some of America’s more notorious weather, but more on that later.
My personal experience of cycling across the north American continent could be described as a bitter sweet one. In no particular order, some of the things I struggled with were: the vast distances between towns/cities, particularly the further west I went, the lack of healthy food options available, a total absence of public transport in much of the country and despite my meticulous planning, there was no avoiding all of the extremities of American weather. On the other hand, there were plenty of aspects about this continent I loved: the super friendly people for one and the chance to meet a wide range of folk from different races and backgrounds. The scenery was mesmerizing (if you love deserts as much as I do) and the sense of wilderness and space found in the States is unmatched in any other country I’ve (as yet) been to. And finally, and on a purely practical level, I found every day expenses such as motels, restaurant and bars to be of reasonable price making my trip much more affordable then touring in Western Europe.
Roads and Traffic
Now, you may have noticed that in the above spiel, I’ve avoided all mention of the elephant in the room… namely, that America is a country built for the motorcar and cycling across it is likely to be difficult and unpleasant. It was something which concerned me before I went and whilst it is true that America’s towns and cities are built for the car driver (think: out-of-town shopping malls and city centres without pavements), I found the bits in between (which will make up the majority of your pedalling time), were usually very pleasant places to ride a bicycle. The reason, I believe, is that America is not a densely populated country; just 94 people per mile² (compared to 727 per mile²back home in the UK, 309 in France, 1202 in India and 214 in Morocco). Admittedly, the first leg through New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania were a cyclist’s worst nightmares come true. An almost seamless conurbation with my days a non-stop sound track of SUV’s roaring past. Full disclosure… I didn’t even like the USA that first week. Thankfully, I only had to travel about 300 miles from New York before reaching rural Pennsylvania and once there, the population and the traffic finally thinned out, and I began to experience the type of cycling I’d secretly hoped for; wide, empty roads that stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see whilst some even had a bike lane running alongside.
Another advantage to cycling in a car-centric society which I discovered; many of the old roads are abandoned in favour of newer faster routes, and these ‘old trails’ are left for tourists and the few locals who live there. I followed a number of these throughout the Midwest and they were a welcome relief when I was sick of the sound of lorries and SUVs. I should warn you though that further west, I had no choice but to ride on the Interstate sometimes since no other roads went my way. This is not as bad as it sounds; they always had a wide hard-shoulders that felt relatively safe. Some even have a service road running alongside for miles (which were presumably once the main road until they built the newer, bigger, wider one), so I rode on these whenever I could. Just watch out because hard shoulders are littered with wire that gets flung all over the place when a lorry tyre blows; I got a number of punctures this way. And one final word of warning; different states have different rules and not all of them allow bicycles on their bit of interstate, so check on rules before you cross state lines and plan your journey accordingly; I had to make some pretty big detours in Utah because of this.
Food and Sleep
During that first year I rode in the late summer and early autumn and the weather was pretty damn fine, with some days suffocatingly hot and others where it rained good and hard, but not often. For this first stage and not really knowing what to expect, I made sure I packed my tent and sleeping bag but in reality, I only used them on three occasions. I discovered the majority of campsites were miles off the beaten track and without facilities, meaning of course they are best accessed by motorcar. I found it much more convenient to spend my nights in a town or city where there are motels, shops and restaurants… but you should still check out the local area. Be warned; staying the night within a town does not necessarily give you the easy access to facilities that you might hope. Many a time, I checked into a motel after a long day in the saddle, only to find the nearest place to get food involved another ten-mile ride… because my motel was in the centre of town and all the restaurants were at the out-of-town shopping mall. On another memorable occasion, despite there being a restaurant three doors down from my motel, I had to scramble along the grassy embankment of an interstate to get there because there was no pedestrian access. (At times like that I really hated America.) At some point through Ohio, I finally worked out that if the nearest restaurant was miles away, not only was it perfectly acceptable to order a takeout to be delivered to my motel room, often and for a tip, the delivery guy was happy to pick me up a six pack of beer as well. It felt a bit weird doing this to begin with. I felt as though I was going against my principals; buying into that whole American car culture thing, but when in Rome… (Plus, it felt safer than a ride out after dark in a country that still has very high drink driving convictions.)
And finally, a note on the food. Now, I’m sure that in homes all across America, there is delicious, varied and healthy home cooking going on, but I’m afraid for the traveller, relying on restaurants and take-outs, then on the whole, American food is truly awful. All those cliches you’ve heard regarding the excesses of the American diet: supersize meals, bladder-busting buckets of fizzy drinks, over-processed foods, french fries with everything… All true I’m afraid. And their meat consumption? Even as a meat eater myself, the sheer amount they eat is truly horrifying. As time went on, I started to consider the chain restaurant Subway as my healthiest option; at least I could get a tuna and salad baguette. (Never mind it’s now emerged their baguettes have a ridiculously high sugar content). It was a relief when I got further out west and found an abundance of Mexican restaurants, where I took to fajitas with great gusto; I never got sick of eating prawns, tomato salsa, sizzling vegetables and guacamole. But my first trip to the States; despite riding 1200 miles and being incredibly fit, I still gained about 14 pounds, and for that I lay the blame solely on the type of food available.
Landscapes
Definitely one of the best things about the United States is the sheer scale and variation of the landscape and for simplicities sake, it can be divided roughly it into three parts. The east coast (which is where most people seem to live), is the most built up, confusing and chaotic part of the States, albeit with some greenery and state parks dotted about. It’s all boxed in by the Appalachian Mountains too so, if you are heading out west, you’ll have no choice but to ride over them. These mountains (unlike the Rockies which I’ll come to in a minute) are what us Europeans are used to thinking of a mountain range; they have an obvious beginning and an end. You’ll start one side and follow the road sharply up, follow it to the summit (maybe incurring few peaks along the way,) before coming back down the other side. And they’ll likely only take a few hours to cross in a car or, for me on my bicycle, two days. (I was very proud of my first mountain range crossing, especially since there was a heat wave both days.)
Not too far west of the Appalachians and you’ll come to the middle bit, otherwise known as the Great Plains or Prairies, and with a few notable exceptions, they are as flat as a flattened pancake. Coming from a hilly country like the UK, it took a bit of getting used to because every time I rounded a bend, I kept expecting to see hills, but none ever came. From Columbus in Ohio until after Oklahoma City there was barely a slope on my route, which is a total of a thousand miles of flatness. Awesome huh? (Unless of course you get a headwind.) My experience of the Plains was that they were flat, hot and pretty empty, but inhabited by friendly people. (Except for around the borders of Indiana and Illinois, don’t ask me why?) For the most part, the traffic was sparse, even in the larger cities of Cincinnati and St Louis where quite frankly, I’ve seen more traffic in the Lake District on a summer’s day. Day after day in the Prairies, I would cycle past fields that stretched for hundreds of acres, watered by central pivot irrigators that towered over me and were nearly a mile each in length; I began to feel like an ant crawling across that landscape. (Actually, I felt like that for most of America.) Between St Louis and Clinton in Missouri, I had the pleasure of riding the Katey Trail: a 240-mile-long disused railway line that is now a recreational trail and it was traffic free bliss.
After Clinton, things got harder as towns were now further apart, often 50-70 miles, sometimes more, and I started to take a day in between each ride to recover. It generally wasn’t my legs that needed the rest but my backside and my wrists which were always agony after a long day. My main problem is that I am just not particularly athletic. And I’m slow; a one hundred miles ride would likely take me ten hours (eleven or twelve with rest stops) and that is an awfully long time to be out in the heat of the Midwest. So now I had two choices: either split my rides into two by rough camping in between towns (illegal in America) or ask someone to drive a support vehicle for me. (Say, a partner who doesn’t want to be left behind whilst I swanned off on holiday but who didn’t like cycling either.) I was really lucky to have someone to provide this kind of help; I could be picked up at a prearranged spot and get dropped off again next day, thus breaking the longer stretches into two without having to camp out with the Rattlers and scorpions. But if you are going down the rough camping route, I would definitely advise doing so in late autumn when the weather isn’t stupidly hot.
Once I’d left the green of Oklahoma state behind and crossed into the Panhandles of Texas, I began to move into the Southwest which, with a few exceptions is pretty much desert, desert and more desert with several mountain ranges thrown in. This is where the serious riding began. The Panhandles of Texas were flat and, away from the main Interstate, where also empty. I’d typically see about five cars in a morning. After Texas came New Mexico and The Rocky Mountains but unlike the Appalachians, it was hard to say where they started exactly; the Southwest is all up on a high plateau, and each mountain range not clearly defined. After Amarillo, I cycled west for three days, barely noticing the road climbing the entire way until I came to a sign in Vega telling me I was 4020ft above sea level; that’s almost as high as Ben Nevis in Scotland, without noticing! It depends on which route you take of course, but for me, the Rockies didn’t become seriously challenging until after Santa Fe; up in the Jemez mountains, where I made it up a few steep passes which were almost 8000ft above sea level. I also crossed the Colorado Plateau and the Sierra Nevada range. But for the whole of those 1500 miles, I don’t think I ever dropped below 2500ft until I began my final descent into Los Angeles County, west of the Sierra Nevada’s.
Weather
Aside from its big open spaces and deserts, there is something else that makes the North American continent feel wild and lawless, and that is its weather. Sadly, most of it isn’t cyclist friendly. There is the wind, heat, hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornados, savage winters, and did I mention the wind?
Top of my list of weather to avoid has to be Tornado season. (Can you imagine the terror of encountering a twister on a bicycle. You’d have no chance.) One of the advantages of splitting the crossing over a few years was being able to plan around it. Tornado season ‘usually’ occurs across the Great Plains and over to the east a bit further during the spring and early summer, so this part of my ride was completed during the months of August and September, and the rest was done in the spring months, before the southwestern deserts became too hot and suffer their notorious summer storms. The severity of America’s weather was brought home to me during my time there. During one spring, as I cycled across Arizona, I heard on the news that Joplin in Missouri, a place I’d stayed the previous autumn, had been hit by a tornado. The bar where I’d enjoyed a convivial evening chatting to staff had been destroyed and some of the twenty people killed were workers at that bar.
On a more cheerful note, if you love thunderstorms, you’ve come to the right place. I saw some awesome lightening shows in America that seem to come almost out of nowhere. Thankfully, all but one occurred in the evening and not as I rode. And then there is a different type of storm altogether; hurricanes. Whilst on my first leg, heading through Illinois, Hurricane Ike was occurring to the southwest of the country and whilst I didn’t experience the full force of it, I was in for a few very blustery days riding. But the main fallout for me was the flooding; I had a nightmare of a time trying to get into St Louis because the Mississippi river had burst its banks and most of the city’s approach roads were underwater. But if you should be in the vicinity of a hurricane, you’ll not be cycling anywhere for a wee while.
Next on my weather watch list is the heat and as early as March and April the deserts can get extremely hot during the day (but frosty at night.) I would try to start out as soon as it was light and finish riding by 11am because by 10 it was usually too hot; many a time I cycled in temperatures approaching 40° C. But at least the desert heat is dry; only 30% humidity when I was there so when it clouded over, it at least felt cooler. In the near 100% humidity of the Prairies, I’m afraid it is damn hot all of the time.
And that brings me to the last of my warnings: the wind. Now, I had been expecting to have some pretty serious headwinds across the Great Plains, what with them being flat and all but, aside from the odd day, I was pretty lucky. It was in the southwest where the wind became a major problem. I’m guessing because it’s up on such a high plateau, there is nothing to stop those westerly winds as they come roaring in off the Pacific Ocean, and especially once I was over the Rockies there was no getting away from it. For weeks at a time, I was at the mercy of 40mph headwinds where my speed would be reduced to a mere 6.5mph; it was most dispiriting to say the least. But thankfully, my moral was restored on the odd day the wind did stop, when I found I could fly along for 65 miles each day.
People
There is so much I could say about my experience of meeting Americans, it would fill a book. (Did I already mention I’m writing one?) But for now, all I’m going to say is this: drop all of your preconceived ideas. You know the one’s I’m talking about; the Americans you’ve seen in the movies or read about in the media. There are so many cliches about the American culture; some are true, but many more are not and since you’ll be riding a bicycle, it’s going to bring you into contact with a whole range of people so, (if you aren’t familiar with the States already), then you are going to be in for some real eye-opening experiences. Just observe, learn and enjoy. Happy cycling.
Dawn Rhodes xx
My Route
New York – Pittsburgh = 430 miles
Pittsburgh – St Louis = 817 miles
St Louis – Oklahoma City = 670 miles
Oklahoma City – Santa Fe = 613 miles
Santa Fe – Las Vegas = 740 miles
Las Vegas – Los Angeles = 321 miles